VMware Converter 4.0 Standalone Public Beta Announcement

[vmweathers]

Copied below is the email that is going out to announce the public beta for Converter 4.0.

Follow the instructions to register for the beta and participate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VMware Converter 4.0 Standalone Beta Invitation

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in VMware(R) beta programs. Our upcoming release

of VMware Converter 4.0 Standalone product includes many exciting

enhancements that our customers have been requesting including P2V support

for Linux and Win 2K8 sources, hot cloning enhancements as well as workflow

automation enhancements. We are certain you will find participation in this beta

program a valuable experience. We are looking forward to working closely with

you during this beta program.

As part of this beta, we request you to extensively test several areas of feature

enhancements including P2V support for Linux and Win 2K8 sources, hot

cloning enhancements as well as workflow automation enhancements. Your

active participation in this beta program is critical. We appreciate and value

your efforts to install upon downloading the software and actively provide us

with your valuable product feedback.

~~ Getting Started ~~

If you already have a VMware store account, please follow the link below to

gain access to Converter 4.0 beta software, documentation and join the

Converter 4.0 beta community.

If you don’t have a VMware store account, please follow the link below to create

a VMware store account, gain access to Converter 4.0 beta software,

documentation and join Converter 4.0 beta community.

~~ How to Provide Feedback ~~

Your active feedback is much appreciated. Please provide your feedback through

the Converter 4.0 beta community by:

• Filing Support Requests (SRs)

• Participating in Converter 4.0 Beta Forum Discussions on VMware communities site

• Responding to surveys on Converter 4.0 Beta Forum

~~ Support Requests (SRs) ~~

File all issues that you find as Support Requests (SRs), even if you report them to

VMware by other means. SRs should include log files wherever applicable.

Thank you for your participation.

Sincerely,

The VMware Beta Program Team

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[robstarox]

I've tried 4 different machines. 2 macs and 2 windows machines..

All go to a 404 error page. WTF!!!!!

[williambishop]

Where are you located?

[SolarUrchin]

This seems to be an error with permissions on VMware's end. It should not matter the browser or platform that you use. Last we have heard from them, they are working on resolving this.

[robstarox]

It doesnt matter where im located...what matter is they got this misconfigured on their side.... server side...

how hard can it possibly be to post a file on apache or IIS....its not rocket science.

[williambishop]

I was going to over you a proxy through my system for a quick fix....But, seeing as you're even more of a prick than I am....then you're right--it doesn't matter where you are.

[robstarox]

Basically what it looks like is this... They are using Akamai to host thier files or thier webpages. Akamai is a content delivery company that has dns based load balancing (location based dns forwarding to closest/non busiest servers). So either they are mirroring the data incorrectly or vmware doesnt know how to get all of it mirrored properly...

which would explain why some people work and some dont........

[williambishop]

To me it doesn't matter what it is. So far, you've posted 9 times, 2 have been insults to people offering to help in some way. The other 7 have been rather immature complaints....So again, I agree with you, it doesn't matter where you are. That is a subtle way of saying "piss off".

[Badsah]

Okay, first of all, let's not start going down this path. I realize some people are very frustrated. The issue has nothing to do with Akamai.

None of us can reproduce this problem, outside or inside our firewall, using external user accounts. But based on the cases we have resolved so far, on a user-by-user basis, we can tell you that there are several reasons why a particular user may be unable to access the links:

(1) The user finds out that the target community is http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/converter and tries to go directly there. This won't work since you must validate your beta registration by way of one of the two links provided in the invitation email from VMware. After doing that the first time, you can go the target site directly every time.

• SOLUTION: Follow the yellow brick road. Don't get sidetracked by flying monkeys.

(2) Clicking into the links provided in the email blast for some reasons may be confusing the application with extra query parameters that are being appended to the URLs.

• - SUGGESTED SOLUTION: Copy and paste the appropriate link into your browser directly.

• - Customers with a Store account (the email address that received the invitation should be your login or it won't work): - if needed, you will have to join VMware Communities and create a unique Community username. If you run into a situation where you get an error message no matter what username you choose, send an email to <converter4_beta_setup@vmware.com> because I know how to fix your account.

• - Customers who do not have a Store account:

(3) You are logging in with a different email address than the one where you received the VMware invitation to the beta program. That won't work since the email address is what ties you to beta access, both for the community and for the subsequent download site.

• SOLUTION: Log into Store/Communities with the same email address as in the invitation. If you require community username remapping from one Store account/email to another, send an email to <converter4_beta_setup@vmware.com>.

robstarox, I believe you fall into the #3 camp because I simply don't see you in the access group for Converter 4.0 Beta community, so I am thinking your yahoo.com email address is not registered for the beta. Contact us privately at <converter4_beta_setup@vmware.com> and we'll work through your case.

IF any of you still cannot get in, then I need to ask IT to troubleshoot further because we can't think of any other reason why a registered beta participant should not be able to access the beta community and the downloads.

---

Badsah Mukherji

VMware Web Communities Team

[mdelvecchio]

your link doestnt work, even in your detailed PROBLEM/SOLUTION email.

not sure what a "store account" is. i have a community account, and ive registerred my purchase. yet when i try the "i have a store account" link, its a custom 404 error.

when i try the "i dont have a store account" link, it wont let me sign-up (via the form) because my email addy is already used (by me).

...dont know why you cant reproduce this, its happening both at home and work for me from here.

[sricha27]

I've tried all the things you mentioned above

I used the correct links

I used the correct email addresses

I made sure the links had no extra query params

So I've emailed you as requested

Steve

[dconvery]

Badsah -

I just clicked on your link using Ubuntu with Firefox. Worked fine - even with the caps this time. I am in Eastern US if that makes any difference, but you say it does not. 7:52PM Eastern.

Dave

************************

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.

Doug Larson

[vmweathers]

>

>

>

First production one was PAINFUL. It split the volumes out(creating a separate / and /boot), but the biggest problem was that it chose the wrong adapter, so I had to change it to LSI. Then I went in and modified the fstab with the new values(because it split them out), and waited through a 30 minute disk check. After that, it came up. There were of course a half dozen other issues, but mostly small. Ended up having to boot into a Centos rescue mode with the CD to make changes since grub wasn't available(because it split the volumes out, it wasn't loading anything).

>

Centos 5 build, 140G.

Hi William. Can you please post this as a new thread in the Converter beta forums instead of out here in the normal Converter forums in the Beta Announcement thread?

As to the content of your post -- just FYI, centOS is not on our list of officially supported OSes for Linux P2V in Converter 4.0. However, this being said, I would expect it to work anyways, and what you are reporting sounds like a bug to me. We do not purposefully "split out" the /boot directory from the root (/) directory into a separate volume. If /boot resides on the same volume as the /, then we should just be recognizing that / is the system as well as active volume (in Converter parlance).

Also, we are aware of the issue where we choose the wrong controller for CentOS, and we are working on it. I am assuming that the other issues you encountered were related to networking, as we're not yet performing any networking reconfiguration (e.g., the interface config files often reference MAC addresses, which are different in the new VM). If there's anything else you're having to tweak, please let us know.

Can you please obtain the logs and post them along with a new thread in the Converter Beta Forum (mention /boot and / being split and CentOS in the subject)?

Since there is a task to obtain logs from, you can open the GUI and select the task (might have to change the time range to see the task).

Then click the "export logs..." link near the bottom right, above the list of events.

If this doesn't work, you can grab all of the logs by selecting "File -> Export Logs" to create a log package.

If this also fails, you can just grab the logs directly from the log directory.

• On windows this is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Converter\logs

• On linux it is /var/log/vmware-converter/

Erik

[williambishop]

Yes, I am aware that it is not on the supported list, however the client doesn't specify anything other than 2.4 or higher. I didn't post it as a negative about the product, in fact it succeeded, so that in my book is a clear positive. Yes, it took some tinkering. But because it wasn't on the list, I did not think it appropriate to post as a bug in the beta forum....I wanted to point to a success, because I had left a previous post that I would be testing it soon, and so I posted the results.

BTW, Centos is a redhat clone, and there is very, very little difference between it and the RHEL series....Technically it should enter support.

[Khal]

I'm using Firefox 3.0.3 on Win XP.

The link in the original post does not work: http://www.vmware.com/publicbeta/conv4-beta - gives a 404.

The link posted later on, with different capitalization, appears to work: http://www.vmware.com/publicbetanew/CONV4-BETA

[bobvance]

Dittos to Khal.

Upper case link works.

bv

[mdelvecchio]

everytime i click the uppercase version, it asks me to register. but...i...already am..registerred. whaaa?

wtf. seriously -- this is a major enterprise IT firm that i am entrusting my servers to, how can they not manage a download URL properly??

so if im already registerred in the communities, and i already registerred my product, how/where can i download the freaking beta?

thanks!

matt

[bobvance]

remove the "new" from the link

http://www.vmware.com/publicbeta/CONV4-BETA

____________________^^^^^^^^^^^^

bv

[bobvance]

WTF !!!!

Now it's not working for me and I just used it an hour ago!!!!

Well at least I already downloaded it.

bv

UPDATE:

I figured it out -- I have two accounts

one corporate

& one personal (i guess = "store account")

When logged in with corporate account, it doesn't work.

But I can logout of corporate account and

then login to the Personal account and it works.

bv

[Badsah]

All,

For those of you who encountered the "404 error - Page not found"

problem last week, I have good news. IT was able to identify the root

cause and fix the issue over the weekend. Please retry the entire flow

beginning with clicking the appropriate link in your public beta

announcement/invitation email. If you have any questions or issues,

please contact converter4_beta_setup@vmware.com .

Thank you.

---

Badsah Mukherji

VMware Web Communities Team